Chapter 31 - Chapter 31: Chapter 31: Kill the Strong Enemy, Count the Gains

Chapter 31: Chapter 31: Kill the Strong Enemy, Count the Gains

At that moment, Zhou Chun, who was simultaneously struck by two first-grade upper-class Talismans from both front and back, was first startled and then quickly made his countermove.

One could see him pouring more Mana into the Moon Blade Meteor Wheel, causing the Magic Artifact to split into two, transforming into two semicircular moon blades which he then directed to slam into the Fire Serpent and the Golden Spear.

Simultaneously, with a thought, the Rock Earth Turtle beside him suddenly smacked its tail on the ground and leaped up, turning into a flesh-and-shell shield that positioned itself in front of him.

In midair, the moon blades collided with the Fire Serpent and Golden Spear, exhausting most of the Spells’ power before falling to the ground, spent.

Afterward, the significantly weakened Fire Serpent and Golden Spear landed on the back of the Rock Earth Turtle and on top of Zhou Chun’s Protective Barrier, failing to cause any real harm to master and servant.

This unexpected turn of events left the man with triangular eyes and the woman in red gauze dumbfounded and their complexions greatly changed.

Meanwhile, Zhou Chun and the Rock Earth Turtle, having landed back on the ground, quickly seized this opportunity to launch a counterattack.

With a flick of his sleeve, Zhou Chun’s Silver Short Sword flew out, aiming straight for the triangle-eyed man ahead.

The Rock Earth Turtle slammed its turtle paw against the ground, and numerous sharp stone spikes sprang up around the triangle-eyed man, battering his Golden Light Protective Shield into erratic, ceaseless shimmering.

Only then did the triangle-eyed man regain his senses and, while maneuvering the earthen yellow round shield Magic Artifact to block the Silver Short Sword, he cried out in desperate anger, “Damn it, sharp as a tack! My dear, you go first, I’ll hold them off to cover your escape!”

Upon hearing his words, the woman’s pretty face suddenly changed, then after a slight hesitation she nodded and replied, “Then be careful, husband. I’ll wait for you at our usual place.”

After speaking, she retracted her azure long sword Magic Artifact and swiftly turned to retreat into the woods.

Seeing this, Zhou Chun did not make a move to capture her, but merely channeled Mana into the two semicircular moon blades on the ground, causing them to fly up into the sky and merge into one to form a silver-black circle again.

Watching the rotating silver-black circle in the air, a trace of fear flashed in the triangle-eyed man’s eyes.

He nervously swallowed and spoke softly to Zhou Chun, “Esteemed fellow Daoist, I admit defeat today. If you just let me go, I’ll leave my Storage Pouch for you!”

Zhou Chun, upon hearing this, had a flicker of interest in his eyes and softly replied, “Really? You better not be deceiving me.”

“It’s the absolute truth, if I lie to you, I’m not human!” declared the triangle-eyed man with a thump on his chest, utterly sincere in his tone.

“Then put the Storage Pouch on the ground and be on your way,” Zhou Chun looked down in thought for a moment before stating his condition.

Hearing this, a surge of joy flashed in the triangle-eyed man’s eyes as he hastily bowed to Zhou Chun, saying, “Thank you, fellow Daoist, for your magnanimity. I take my leave.”

After saying this, he directly untied the Storage Pouch from his waist and tossed it into the nearby bushes, then without retracting his Protective Shield, he turned and walked toward the forest.

But no sooner had he taken a few steps than the spinning silver-black circle from the air roared as it sliced towards him.

“You’re not keeping your word!!” The roar ripped from the triangle-eyed man’s mouth as he turned around, his face flushed with rage, frantically using the earthen yellow round shield Magic Artifact in an attempt to protect himself.

“Who said I’m not keeping my word? Didn’t I let you leave and give you a head start?” Zhou Chun’s face showed a faint mocking smile, watching as the earthen yellow round shield failed to withstand the repeated slashes of the Moon Blade Meteor Wheel and quickly fell apart.

Then, without giving the triangle-eyed man a chance to employ any other means, Zhou Chun, with a concentrated surge of Mana, caused the silver-black circle to spin once overhead before crashing down toward him.

This time, he could not withstand the blow; his Protective Barrier shattered and he met his death on the spot.

“This is what they call, ‘He who practices evil brings about his own destruction!'”

In the forest, Zhou Chun gestured a Spell, gathering moisture to form rain and washed the blood from the Moon Blade Meteor Wheel, then coldly taunted while gazing at the bloodied corpse on the ground.

For those Bandit Cultivators who specialized in ambushing and murdering other cultivators for their loot, Zhou Chun held no sympathy or mercy.

The crimes they had committed would not be atoned for, even if they died a hundred times.

If he had lacked the power to do anything about it before, that would have been one thing, but now that he had the chance to take a Bandit Cultivator’s life, Zhou Chun certainly wouldn’t pass up the opportunity for such a good deed.

Moreover, he was certain that the Storage Pouch the triangle-eyed man had left behind was a Blinding Method, and it definitely did not contain his true wealth.

Indeed, as he searched the corpse on the ground, Zhou Chun quickly found another Storage Pouch from inside the inner pocket of his sleeve.

With a brief probe of his Divine Sense into the Storage Pouch, Zhou Chun’s face immediately broke into a smile.

Next, Zhou Chun burned the corpse on the ground, gathered the Rock Earth Turtle into the Spirit Beast Pouch, and promptly flew from the battlefield using the Wind Control Skill.

It wasn’t until an hour after Zhou Chun left that the woman in red gauze returned to the scene.

When she saw the fragments of Magic Artifacts, the remnants of blood stains, and the ashes left from the burning of the body, she instantly understood what had happened.

Her pretty face turned pale; her legs gave out and she collapsed onto the ground, covering her face with her hands and bursting into tears.

“Wuu wuu wuu, husband, how could you just leave like that? You promised to grow old with me together, how could you abandon me and leave…”

In the forest, the sound of a woman’s sorrowful crying carried on the wind, unceasing for a long time.

Elsewhere, after leaving the Hongyan Mountain Range, Zhou Chun hurriedly found a secluded place to stop and meditate to recover his Mana.

A first-grade superior Magic Artifact is indeed useful, but it really consumes a lot of Mana.

The battle that lasted less than half an hour consumed nearly sixty percent of Zhou Chun’s Mana.

And that was just one first-grade superior Magic Artifact.

It was easy to imagine that if he didn’t break through to the later stages of the Qi Refinement Realm, even if he had two first-grade superior Magic Artifacts, he would likely run out of Mana after only a few uses and then be at the mercy of others.

Compared to that, a Spirit Pet was better, not only versatile but also not requiring the consumption of the master’s Mana.

Thinking of this, Zhou Chun glanced at the Rock Earth Turtle standing guard as his protector, and before entering meditation, he specifically took out a bag of jerky from his Storage Pouch and fed it to the turtle as a reward.

More than two hours later, Zhou Chun woke up from his meditation, his Mana finally recovered to over eighty percent.

He then took out the stone jar, swallowed a big gulp of Purification Spirit Water to expel the Evil Qi from his body, and began to check the loot from the triangular-eyed man’s Storage Pouch.

The triangular-eyed man’s two Storage Pouches weren’t lacking in contents; the one used as a Blinding Method had over twenty Spirit Coins, Talismans, clothing, Classics, and other items, reasonably convincing indeed.

The other Storage Pouch, which Zhou Chun found in the man’s inner sleeve pocket, contained more than one hundred and sixty Spirit Coins, as well as two bottles of Elixirs, several jade and wooden boxes holding precious Spiritual Objects, and a number of Secret Manuals on Cultivation Techniques.

Zhou Chun also collected the triangular-eyed man’s previously used Magic Artifacts, a Fire Spear and a bronze gourd Magic Artifact.

Of these two Magic Artifacts, the Fire Spear, being full of cracks, was estimated to be discarded after a few more uses and was deemed worthless.

On the other hand, the bronze gourd Magic Artifact, which could release fireballs, was intact, providing Zhou Chun with an additional usable Magic Artifact.

At this point, Zhou Chun gave both Magic Artifacts a few looks, then put them away, planning to refine them after returning to his clan.

He then turned his attention to the jade bottles containing Elixirs and the various jade and wooden boxes.

Opening the two jade bottles, he saw one of them contained a purplish-red powder.

Zhou Chun recognized it as the healing Spiritual Medicine know as “Condensing Flesh-Regeneration Powder,” highly effective for stopping bleeding and healing wounds.

The other jade bottle held three brownish-yellow Elixirs he didn’t recognize, which he would need to have identified by elders once he returned home.

The remaining two jade boxes held two types of Spirit Grass, one was a Red Ginseng with a herb age of over a hundred years, and the other, a Spirit Grass called Seven-Leaf Purple Star Orchid, more valuable than the century-old Red Ginseng.

Both Spirit Grasses were wild, likely possessions of others that the triangular-eyed man had obtained through robbery.

In the final wooden box, there lay an oval-shaped tan ore.

The tan ore was heavy, and Zhou Chun had to use both hands to lift it from the wooden box.

As he examined the object and tried to ascertain its origin, the Rock Earth Turtle suddenly stretched its head towards him, sniffing, and conveyed an unusual emotion to him.

“You’re saying this thing is edible?”

Zhou Chun looked at the Rock Earth Turtle with a face full of surprise, finding it quite unbelievable.

However, with the limited intelligence of the Rock Earth Turtle, it couldn’t understand complex emotions beyond its grasp. It merely nodded its head and conveyed a new thought to him.

“Oh, you’re saying this thing feels beneficial to you, but you can’t eat it now?”

Zhou Chun nodded slightly, understanding the meaning of the Rock Earth Turtle.

It seemed that the tan ore had the effect of promoting bloodline evolution for the Rock Earth Turtle’s species, but there were also requirements for the turtle’s strength.

This Rock Earth Turtle was currently only a mid-grade Demon Beast of the first order. Its own bloodline potential had not yet been fully realized, so it would be difficult to digest the ore at present.

It was estimated that only when the Rock Earth Turtle reached its bloodline potential limit and its Cultivation Level was comparable to that of a twelfth-layer Qi Refinement Realm Cultivator, could it consume the ore to promote bloodline evolution.

Considering this, the tan ore must be a rare resource, and Zhou Chun wondered where the triangular-eyed man had obtained it.

With this thought, Zhou Chun said to the Rock Earth Turtle, “In that case, I’ll keep this item for you for now, and give it to you when you can eat it later.”

Then he turned his attention to the Classics and Secret Manuals.

After flipping through a few Secret Manuals and Classics, Zhou Chun quickly found what he was looking for.

In a classic called “Feng Zhen’s Miscellaneous Discussions,” it recorded a concealing and breath-hiding secret technique left by its owner, Feng Zhen, called “Hidden Cicada Breathing Technique.” It was a practical secret technique that, just like the “Forest Concealment Technique,” used vegetation to hide one’s traces and could also conceal breath and repress Mana fluctuations.

Moreover, unlike the “Forest Concealment Technique,” which does not allow easy movement once deployed, the “Hidden Cicada Breathing Technique” allows for movement within the forest and can achieve a decent camouflage effect while moving.

However, the text also mentioned that the camouflaging effect of “Hidden Cicada Breathing Technique” could basically only fool the naked eye when moving and was unlikely to be effective against Divine Sense, so there were still many limitations in its use.

But even so, Zhou Chun immediately realized that the “Hidden Cicada Breathing Technique” might be the biggest gain from this venture!